Mark Zuckerberg previously begged for forgiveness after how his site was used to ‘divide people’ by spreading fake news

Nearly a year after Facebook and Google launched offensives against fake news, they’re still inadvertently promoting it — often at the worst possible times.

Online services designed to engross users aren’t so easily retooled to promote greater accuracy, it turns out. Especially with online trolls, pranksters and more malicious types scheming to evade new controls as they’re rolled out.

In the immediate aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, Facebook’s “Crisis Response” page for the attack featured a false article misidentifying the gunman and claiming he was a “far left loon.” Google promoted a similarly erroneous item from the anonymous prankster site 4chan in its “Top Stories” results.

A day after the attack, a YouTube search on “Las Vegas shooting” yielded a conspiracy-theory video that claimed multiple shooters were involved in the attack as the fifth result. YouTube is owned by Google.

Facebook has changed the way its site works to tackle fraud and fake news

None of these stories were true. Police identified the sole shooter as Stephen Paddock, a Nevada man whose motive remains a mystery.

The attack took place on October 1 attack at a music festival, leaving 58 dead and hundreds wounded.

The companies quickly purged offending links and tweaked their algorithms to favour more authoritative sources. But their work is clearly incomplete — a different Las Vegas conspiracy video was the eighth result displayed by YouTube in a search Monday.

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“As always, when we find deceptive ad practices on our platforms we move swiftly to take action, including suspending the advertiser account if appropriate,” Chi Hea Cho, a Google spokeswoman, told The New York Times in a statement.

“In addition, we give publishers controls so they can block specific types of ads and advertisers.”